A Texas police officer has been jailed after a police
affidavit revealed he allegedly battered, without provocation, an innocent
female pedestrian who happened to be walking near the scene of an unrelated
late-night traffic stop.
The affidavit, written by another police officer who
reviewed documentation of the May 29 incident, alleges Cpl. James Palermo of
the San Marcos Police Department had stopped a car at about 1 a.m. for driving
the wrong way on a one-way street. As he questioned the driver, he noticed the
pedestrian — whom the affidavit alleges didn’t look at or talk to either
Palermo or the stopped motorist and didn’t exhibit any “suspicious” behavior —
and called her over to the scene, where he began questioning her about walking
near the scene.
The woman, 22-year-old Texas State University student Alexis
Alpha, told Palermo she didn’t believe she had done anything wrong. Their
interaction became more acrimonious when she couldn’t immediately produce the
identification Palermo allegedly had demanded.
As the officer dialed up the verbal heat, the victim
allegedly advised him to conduct traffic stops elsewhere if he didn’t like
where she was walking, called him a “dick” and observed that he appeared to
simply be exorcising his pre-existing bad mood on her.
She had no idea.
Palermo allegedly responded by grabbing her, pushing her
against the stopped motorist’s Toyota Prius, and then slamming her to the
concrete, where he sat on her back. He allegedly cuffed her and placed her in
his patrol vehicle, telling her she was being arrested for obstruction.
The assault knocked out two of Alpha’s teeth. Palermo took
her to Central Texas Medical Center, where medical staff advised her she also
had sustained a concussion and would need follow-up care, which could involve
multiple surgeries. So Palermo took Alpha to the jail and slapped on two more
charges: resisting arrest and public intoxication.
Alpha never filed a complaint over her assault. In fact, the
police themselves discovered Palermo’s attack after reviewing footage from his
patrol car’s dashboard video camera. The department obtained warrants for his
arrest following an internal investigation and booked him into the Hays County
Law Enforcement Center on July 16 for aggravated assault with serious bodily injury
by a public servant — a first-degree felony that carries a possible maximum
sentence of life in prison. He had been on paid administrative leave since the
internal investigation had begun in early June, and is now on indefinite unpaid
leave as the legal process unfolds.
San Marcos Police Chief Howard E. Williams told the San
Marcos Mercury:
I won’t prejudge the [internal] investigation. I have not
heard what the officer has to say yet and I’ll reserve judgment until that
happens. But there are standards and I think it’s fairly obvious what we think
about his conduct that night in that we were the ones that went down and filed
the criminal charges. … I believe what he did was criminal.
Palermo, who had worked for the department since 2000, was
the subject of a complaint two years ago alleging excessive use of force, but
that complaint was dismissed.